Michael May's Blog, page 153

The Abyss (1989)

Who's In It: Ed Harris (The Rock), Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves), and Michael Biehn (The Terminator, Aliens).

What It's About: Close Encounters of the Wet Kind.

How It Is: For two hours, it's a perfectly constructed thriller. It's the characters' actions that continually ramp up the tension and lead them from set piece to set piece, so the story feels very organic and holds together wonderfully for most of the movie. Ed Harris plays the foreman of an underwater drilling team that's tasked with helping some Navy SEALs find a missing submarine. The SEAL commander (Biehn) grows increasingly unhinged as the story unfolds, but the best drama is between Harris and his estranged wife (Mastrantonio), who's also recruited to assist in the mission since she designed the drilling platform.

Harris and Mastrantonio's relationship is what anchors the whole story amidst all the craziness. It's hard not to get the feeling that Cameron is working through his own relationship issues, but the two characters feel like a real couple who have disconnected from each other because they're both so stubborn and independent. If there's a negative aspect to the way they're presented, it's that Harris is clearly the good guy in their relationship at first, but that becomes less true as the movie progresses and Cameron lets us get to know Mastrantonio better. By the end, all I want is for these two to survive and have a second chance at working things out.

As strong as most of the movie is though, it doesn't quite stick its landing. I'm enough of a scifi nerd to appreciate that undersea aliens are somehow responsible for most of what's happening, but honestly, The Abyss would be a stronger film without that aspect. It works best when it's focused on the characters' trying to survive. And though the aliens' appearances are mysterious and exciting during the first two hours, the resolution of that plotline in the movie's last fifteen minutes feels tacked on and hokey. It's like the special edition of Close Encounters where you get to see inside the ship. It's unnecessary and works against what the rest of the film has been building towards.

But man, those first two hours...

Rating: Four out of five water tentacles.

The Door to Infinity: Mythos without Lovecraft [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

I got my start in the Mythos business by playing Call of Cthulhu, a role-playing game in which private detectives, soldiers, dilettantes and hobos face off against cultists with one goal: to return the Great Old Ones to the earth. This fun blend of adventure and horror was created by Sandy Petersen and Gene Day and based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft.

The game led me to read virtually every story Lovecraft wrote. And what you don't find are adventures featuring private detectives, soldiers, dillentes and hobos facing off against cultists with one goal: to return the Great Old Ones to the earth. Lovecraft's protagonists are usually people much the same as Lovecraft himself: New England gentlemen, librarians and writers. A few stories - such as "The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Dunwich Horror" - feature "cultists," but usually in the background.

So what gives? Some of this is the gamification of the Cthulhu Mythos by Petersen. To make the game fun to play, you have to DO something. He included the 1920s Private Eye and other historical professions such as the Hobo and former veterans of WWI. But this was all the way in 1982. Did anyone ever try the Mythos adventure back in the day? Plenty of people wrote pseudo-Lovecraft including August Derleth, Robert Bloch, C Hall Thompson, Henry Kuttner, and Frank Belknap Long. And these were just the ones in Weird Tales. But did anyone ever write a Call of Cthulhu (referred to as CoC from now on) style story to inspire Petersen fifty years later?

Just one writer, a contemporary of HPL with a long list of credits all his own, Edmond Hamilton. The story was "The Door to Infinity" and of course it appeared in Weird Tales (August-September 1936), six months before HPL's death. Hamilton got his start in WT in August 1926 with "The Monster-God of Mamurth", a tale of an invisible temple and its giant spider god. Most of Hamilton's reputation in 1936 rested on his Science Fiction which included gigantic space battles, giving him the sobriquet of "World Wrecker Hamilton". So why would he write a CoC style tale?

The reason is simple. Hamilton was versatile. He wrote all kinds of Science Fiction and Fantasy for WT. He wrote Heroic Fantasy in "Lost Elysium" and "Twilight of the Gods", monster SF in "The Metal Giants" and "The Star-Stealers", lyrical Fantasy like "He That Hath Wings" (inspiring Angel of the X-Men), Animal SF in "Day of Judgment" (Kamandi before Jack Kirby), horror tales like "The Vampire Master" as Hugh Davidson, space opera in "Corsairs of the Cosmos", and every kind of fantastic story you can think of. Hamilton was a writer up for anything, even a Mythos romp.

"Door to Infinity" has two heroes, Inspector Pierce Campbell of Scotland Yard and handsome, young American, Paul Innis. Campbell and Innis have to track down the dangerous Brotherhood of the Door when they steal Innis' wife, Ruth. The agent of the Brotherhood is Chandra Dass, an evil Malay with plenty of henchmen. The two heroes are captured and sent to their deaths down a trap door to the Thames. Only Campbell's resourcefulness saves them, allowing the duo to chase Dass along the river and discover the secret headquarters of the cult in a limestone cliff. Once inside, posing as cultists, the two men find that the Brotherhood has several sacrificial victims, including Ruth, who will supply the energy to open a dimensional door. Paul Innis sees:

The spherical web of wires pulsed up madly with shining force. And up at the center of the gleaming black oval facet on the wall, there appeared a spark of unearthly green light. It blossomed outward, expanded, an awful viridescent flower blooming quickly outward farther and farther. And as it expanded, Ennis saw that he could look through that green light! He looked through into another universe, a universe lying infinitely far across alien dimensions from our own, yet one that could be reached through this door between dimensions. It was a green universe, flooded with an awful green light that was somehow more akin to darkness than to light, a throbbing, baleful luminescence.

Ennis saw dimly through green-lit spaces a city in the near distance, an unholy city of emerald hue whose unsymmetrical, twisted towers and minarets aspired into heavens of hellish viridity. The towers of that city swayed to and fro and writhed in the air. And Ennis saw that here and there in the soft green substance of that restless city were circles of lurid light that were like yellow eyes.

In ghastly, soul-shaking apprehension of the utterly alien, Ennis knew that the yellow circles were eyes—that that hell-spawned city of another universe was living—that its unfamiliar life was single yet multiple, that its lurid eyes looked now through the Door! 

Sax RohmerOut from the insane living metropolis glided pseudopods of its green substance, glided toward the Door. Ennis saw that in the end of each pseudopod was one of the lurid eyes. He saw those eyed pseudopods come questing through the Door, onto the dais.

The yellow eyes of light seemed fixed on the row of stiff victims, and the pseudopods glided toward them. Through the open door was beating wave on wave of unfamiliar, tingling forces that Ennis felt even through the protective robe. 

Campbell's trusty revolver takes out the web-wires and the door closes. A big shoot out and a fiery escape and there you have it. One quality CoC adventure.

Was this Hamilton's best work? No, CoC aside, the whole set-up reeks of Sax Rohmer and Fu Manchu. Campbell is Weyland Smith-fantastic and Paul Innis is too handsome and too American. Weird Tales readers in 1936 would have been quite familiar with Fu Manchu, since Rohmer had resurrected his 1917 character and had been writing new Fu's all through the 1930s: Daughter of Fu Manchu (1931), The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932), The Bride of Fu Manchu (1933), The Trail of Fu Manhcu (1934), and President Fu Manchu (1936). Rohmer's racism is also evidenced by the dastardly Chandra Dass.

What I find so interesting about this story is how close Hamilton comes to Lovecraft but does not cross over into the Mythos. Was this because Lovecraft hadn't invited him to join his circle? (I wonder what HPL's reaction to the tale was?) Was it because Hamilton had had no real interest in the Cthulhu Mythos? Did Farnsworth Wright, editor of Weird Tales request this tale? Perhaps Hamilton just got there on his own, for Wright never rejected any story by Hamilton in their twenty-four years of working together. Wright allowed Hamilton great freedom and the rewards were many. The tentactular beasties are squamous and eldritch enough for Lovecraft but in the end they are aliens coming from another dimension. The Mythos magic just isn't there. For us time-traveling back to the days of the Pulps, "The Door to Eternity" makes a great "what could have been". Who knows, I just might get that old box set out and chase some cultists around London or Arkham or even Hamilton's own Ohio.

Read "The Door to Infinity" at Project Gutenberg.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Nerd Lunch, Star Wars, and Kill All Monsters news

Last Tuesday, Nerd Lunch dropped its 153rd episode in which CT and Pax sat down with me and Kay from FANgirl Blog to talk Star Wars. (I've still never recorded a full episode with Jeeg, so that's a lifegoal yet unfulfilled.) Aspects of Star Wars have come up a few times on Nerd Lunch, but this was their first time talking about the series as a whole, so it was an honor to get to participate. We talked about our favorite and least favorite things about the movies and some surprising opinions came out.

It was a great conversation and you should totally listen to it either in the link below or through whatever way you prefer to listen to podcasts. I always enjoy hanging out and talking with the Nerd Lunch fellas and it was a lot of fun meeting and visiting with Kay. You should also check out FANgirl Blog for some great thinkpieces on Star Wars and genre storytelling in general.

One last thing is that I also dropped a little Kill All Monsters news during the show. People have been patiently waiting for Volume 2 and it's coming, but we've got a couple of other treats first. Early next summer, Jason and I are debuting a brand new Kill All Monsters story in an anthology comic. More details on that as we get closer, but we're very excited about it. Then, next autumn, we're planning to do a one-shot, single-issue comic funded by Kickstarter. That will also be a brand new story as we expand the Kill All Monsters world beyond the characters that were introduced in the graphic novel. And then finally, very early in 2016, we'll finish the graphic novel we started in Ruins of Paris. I know that's a long time to wait, but we think it'll be worth it and we hope you'll agree.

Nerd Lunch, Star Wars and Kill All Monsters news

Last Tuesday, Nerd Lunch dropped its 153rd episode in which CT and Pax sat down with me and Kay from FANgirl Blog to talk Star Wars. (I've still never recorded a full episode with Jeeg, so that's a lifegoal yet unfulfilled.) Aspects of Star Wars have come up a few times on Nerd Lunch, but this was their first time talking about the series as a whole, so it was an honor to get to participate. We talked about our favorite and least favorite things about the movies and some surprising opinions came out.

It was a great conversation and you should totally listen to it either in the link below or through whatever way you prefer to listen to podcasts. I always enjoy hanging out and talking with the Nerd Lunch fellas and it was a lot of fun meeting and visiting with Kay. You should also check out FANgirl Blog for some great thinkpieces on Star Wars and genre storytelling in general.

One last thing is that I also dropped a little Kill All Monsters news during the show. People have been patiently waiting for Volume 2 and it's coming, but we've got a couple of other treats first. Early next summer, Jason and I are debuting a brand new Kill All Monsters story in an anthology comic. More details on that as we get closer, but we're very excited about it. Then, next autumn, we're planning to do a one-shot, single-issue comic funded by Kickstarter. That will also be a brand new story as we expand the Kill All Monsters world beyond the characters that were introduced in the graphic novel. And then finally, very early in 2016, we'll finish the graphic novel we started in Ruins of Paris. I know that's a long time to wait, but we think it'll be worth it and we hope you'll agree.

Solomon Kane (2009)

Who's In It: James Purefoy (Resident Evil, John Carter), Rachel Hurd-Wood (2003's Peter Pan, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer), Pete Postlethwaite (The Usual Suspects, Inception), Alice Krige (Star Trek: First Contact, Thor: The Dark World), Max Von Sydow (Conan the Barbarian, Never Say Never Again), and Jason Flemyng (Primeval, X-Men: First Class)

What It's About: A ruthless pirate (Purefoy) tries to walk the path of peace when he learns that the devil's after his soul, but you know how these things go.

How It Is: I don't know what took me so long to finally check this movie out. I've been interested in the character for decades and though I've never read a single story featuring him, he seems totally in my wheelhouse. Two things I've loved since childhood: Conan (and by association, Robert E Howard) and holy warriors. I couldn't have told you how much the holy warrior angle is focused on in Howard's Solomon Kane stories, but the guy dresses like a pilgrim and fights monsters. I'm guaranteed to like that.

I feel like I should talk a little about my fascination with the holy warrior trope, because it's a deep part of who I am. I'm repulsed by real life people who claim to kill on God's behalf, but enthralled with fictional explorations of that theme. Sort of how Prince always struggled with the juxtaposition of sex and spirituality in his music, I've searched for a way to reconcile brutality and belief. I haven't been successful in that search, but it hasn't stopped me from looking. I've never been a violent person - in fact, I'm quite the pacifist - but in my college freshman drawing class, we were asked to create self-portraits. My buddy drew himself completely naked with full frontal; I drew myself as the Terminator. The instructor was more shocked by mine.

I've been in exactly one fight my entire life. I was eight or nine and it was over quickly. It was probably a draw, since neither of us knew what we were doing. But though I've never thrown a punch in anger, I drew a lot of violent stuff as a kid and I loved and identified with dark, bloodthirsty characters like Conan and Blackbeard and the literary James Bond. That carried over into my faith too, and it was helpful that my Biblical namesake is the archangel who battles and defeats Satan in Revelation. I completely understood that the real Crusades were horrible and unjustifiable, but I was still intensely drawn to the paradox of being a knight for God. One of my favorite superhero characters of the '90s was Azrael, in part because of that awesome Joe Quesada costume, but also because of his struggle to remain sane and find some peace in his role as holy assassin for a secret, heretical sect of Christianity. So of course I've always been attracted to images of Solomon Kane.

One of the things I like most about the movie version is the amount of attention it gives to this contradiction between soldier and saint. Kane begins the movie as a pirate so bloodthirsty that he'd give Blackbeard a hard time. An encounter with a demon puts the fear of God into him though and he tries to reform. As he wanders, he meets a family of Puritans (led by Postlethwaite and Krige) and travels with them for a while, getting to know their two sons and daughter (Hurd-Wood). But when they enter territory controlled by an evil sorcerer (Flemyng) and his masked, psychotic general, Kane has to figure out how dedicated to peace he really is. Can he stand by and let horrible things happen when he has the skill to stop it? He knows beyond any doubt that picking up a sword will cost him his immortal soul, so what role will that play in his decision? And would such an act of self-sacrifice be enough to redeem Kane in some way?

Solomon Kane isn't a perfect movie. It treads some familiar plot territory and the special effects are satisfactory, but no more than that. But the acting is legitimately excellent and I'm impressed with the moral questions the movie raises and how it comments on them without offering pat answers. I don't know if Robert E Howard was as interested in that kind of thing, but I'm eager to read his version and find out.

Rating: Four out of five passionate pilgrims.

Lord Baltimore: A Confessional [Guest Post]

Mike MignolaBy GW Thomas

They say confession is good for the soul. I suppose it is not customary to admit when you are jealous. We like to pretend we aren't that fallible. But all you have to say is, "Mike Mignola" and I'm there. Mike is about three years older than me. Just three years. And look at all he has accomplished with Hellboy and the other comics of his "Mignolaverse." Three years. And I remember the early Mignola. Most people don't. If you dig through your old copies (of course you have them nicely stacked in mylar bags) of Different Worlds (1979-1981), an obscure gaming magazine, you'll find early illos done by Mignola. And you'll look at them and think, "Sheesh, pretty bad, eh? That kid'll never come to much."

But people improve. (Well, some do. The rest just get jealous, I suppose.) But it's more than that. Mike Mignola isn't just damn entertaining. He's all that, plus he writes and draws about men and women who face monsters. That's what I like to think I do, too. More jealousy.

All this emotional baggage is simply to show you that when it comes to Mike Mignola I am tettering on the brink. That's important because like Dickens says, "This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate." For I am going to break one of my own tenets. I am constantly saying, "I don't have favorites." What's your favorite genre? Depends on my mood. "What's your favorite superhero?" Depends on the franchise. "Who's your favorite homicidal alien dictator in a 1930s serial?" Depends on the moustache. If nothing else, I am a waffler. Or honest about the variability of sense data. You decide.

Enter Mike Mignola. (Teeth clenches in jealousy.) Damn, if he doesn't break me out of my indecisiveness and make me pick. Because I can say that my favorite Mignola character is... no waffling... Lord Baltimore. Look at that. An absolute in a universe that twists and turns and leaves us constantly re-evaluating everything.

Lord Baltimore is a man who has suffered much in his pursuit of the vampire (Really? Vampire? In this day of sparkly teen idol vamps? Really. You bet!) whom he met on the battlefields of WWI, who returned to kill his wife and torment him relentlessly. The story of how they met is an illustrated novel written by Mignola and Christopher Golden in 2007. This was followed by comics that show Baltimore, in the best Solomon Kane fashion, seeking revenge; cleansing the world of evil. Not since Robert E Howard have I seen a character who hits that high water mark like Baltimore. Like the best comics today, the series is broken up into episodes. These include "The Plague Ships," "The Curse Bells," "The Infernal Train," "The Witch of Harju," and several shorter pieces in and around these tales.

One of the aspects that really make this series work for me is that Lord Baltimore is alone. He has associates, but his burning desire to seek revenge, to destroy the creatures of the night, has terrible consequences for those around him. To use a quote from Lady Caroline Lamb first applied to Lord Byron: "Mad, bad, and dangerous to know." This sums up Lord Baltimore pretty well, and like Byron, despite this affliction, he fascinates us. In "The Witch of Harju," Baltimore seems to be gathering a team about him. I hope not. This would reduce that element that I enjoy in the strip. If I want a team, there are plenty out there, from Mignola's own Hellboy and BPRD to Justice League Dark.

Another aspect of the strip that sells it for me is the setting. If Mignola was lazy he would have set the story in the 18th or 19th Century as so many ghostbreakers films have done, like Van Helsing, Sleepy Hollow and The Brothers Grimm (gasp, Hansel and Gretel, Witch Hunters), even the excellent TV show Penny Dreadful. The Black Forest of Germany is an easy locale for dark fairy tales. But Baltimore challenges with an Edwardian setting, post World War I, quite as fascinating, especially when you start to play with history. The authors have ended WWI not with an Armistice but by a plague that kills millions. The surreal version of 1918 on is intriguing and clever.

I've prattled on about Mignola, but I think I must give credit also to the artists of Baltimore. Ben Stenbeck and Dave Stewart provide images that, while similar to Mignola's own shadow-filled style, is their own. These are panels that intrigue but are simple. Like the best of later Moebius' art, it appears easy until you really look at it. An over-blown, Victorian style would only hamper what is a fast-moving and exciting tale. Peter Bergting replaced Stenbeck with "The Witch of Harju," but his style is similar and equally efficient as Stenbock's.

So there you are. Mike Mignola (teeth less tightly clenched). Lord Baltimore, a character who goes on in his search to purge the world of evil. And like Solomon Kane before him, let's hope he never quite arrives at that final destination. Denizens of the dark, beware!

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

It's Halloween!

Happy Halloween, everyone! We made it!

I struggled for a while to figure out what movie would be worthy of writing about for actual Halloween Day, but I finally decided not to do that at all. The movies were for counting down. We're here now, so let's just enjoy the day.

Not that scary movies won't be part of it. I've taken the day off from work and David's home from school, so we're spending our day watching movies and getting ready for tonight. I know The Lost Boys, The Black Cat, and The Private Eyes are on the docket, but we'll probably have time for more. Maybe some Vincent Price or Hammer's The Mummy. Tonight, we'll have our annual viewing of Disney's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

What scary movies are on your watch list today?

Sleepy Hollow (1999)

Who's In It: Jack Sparrow, Wednesday Addams, Rita Skeeter, Dumbledore, Tarzan, Ed Rooney, Uncle Vernon, Emperor Palpatine, Alfred Pennyworth, Max Zorin, Darth Maul, and Saruman.

What It's About: A loose adaptation of Washington Irving's story with Ichabod Crane (Johnny Depp) as a detective instead of a schoolteacher.

How It Is: I loved this in 1999, but that's when Burton was still a director I trusted and cut a lot of slack. I was nervous to rewatch it considering my feelings about most of Burton's recent work, but it turns out that I still love it. He took one of my favorite stories and made it even better with his gothic, fog-shrouded sensibilities, a strong mystery, some great action set pieces, and more nerd-favorite actors than you can throw a pumpkin at. I honestly don't have a bad thing to say about it, so I'll save you a couple of paragraphs of me just gushing and skip right to the...

Rating: Five out of five childlike charmers.

James Blish of the Jungle [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

James Blish won his place in Science Fiction history through the critical and the popular. On the critical side, his novel A Case of Conscience won the Hugo for Best Novel of 1959, telling the tale of a Jesuit priest and his struggle with religious belief in an age that includes space flight and aliens. On the popular side he wrote the first novelizations of Star Trek episodes along with the first new novel, Spock Must Die in 1970. Whether you enjoy his original classics like Black Easter or Cities in Flight or are just a trekker, James Blish left his mark on SF. But every good SF icon has to start somewhere. You would not be surprised to know Blish wrote for the Pulps: Super Science Stories, Cosmic Stories, Astonishing Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, none of these would be hard to believe. But Jungle Stories?

Blish sold two stories to Jungle Stories, "The Snake-Headed Spectre" (Summer 1949) under the pseudonym VK Emden and its sequel "Serpent Fetish" (Winter 1948-49) under his own name. Confusingly, the sequel appeared first.

"The Snake-Headed Spectre", a 112 page novella, begins with Kit Kennedy, known by the local tribes as K'tendi, being hired to lead a group of arrogant Europeans into the jungle on a mysterious quest. These outsiders are lead by Paula Lee, a beautiful but cold Englishwoman, and the fat and toady Stahl. Along for the ride are Bleyswijck and his marines. The local Africans are lead by Tombu, prince of the Wassabi and friend of K'tendi.

The safari does not go well as the major players all try to take control. Stahl boorishly strikes Tombu and the Africans are close to deserting when they discover a strange plain and then an unknown mountain, higher than Everest. The people who live beyond the plain play a loud work drum, frightening the locals. Kit and Tombu leave the party to scout ahead and run into Manalendi, the giant python. The snake is curious about Kit and they become friends after a fashion. The Europeans are captured by the strangers, who are cannibals, and Kit, Tombu and the giant snake go in search of them.

What the rescuers find in the jungle under the mountain is a village surrounded by a palisade and slaves who are working a strange mine. These poor devils are covered in sores and are missing fingers. Finding Stahl and Paula, Kit discovers the safari's real purpose, to investigate the appearance of radioactive pitchblende on the black market. Since the substance is lethal to mine, Stahl had suspected that slave labour was being used. Kit also discovers the man behind the operation is none other than Bleyswijck. The marine is in league with an Arab woman named Nanan, who acts as high priestess to the local Rock God. To save Paula and Stahl, Kit boldly walks into the village, with Tombu and Manalendi the giant python at his side, to challenge the king of the tribe, N'mbono. They fight on the giant drum with spears. The desperate battle ends with N'mbono dead and Kit now king of the tribe. During the conflict, Kit uses the drum's rhythm to send a message to the Wassabi warriors far away, asking for help.

Overthrowing Bleyswijck and Nanan, Kit's victory is interrupted by the sudden appearance of a triceratops, one of the night shapes rumored to live in the area. The drumming has infuriated it, causing it to crash through the log palisade. In the confusion, the Europeans depart. Paula, her husband dead, is very sick but throws herself on Kit: "...I want someone to make me back into a woman again..." The two become lovers. In the sequel it is suggested they lived together in the jungle a short while but split. Both stories were combined, refitted and republished in 1962 as the novel The Night Shapes. In the novel version, Blish inserts a short reunion conveniently at the end, and Paula returns to Ktendi to live happily ever after .

"Serpent's Fetish" is much shorter than its prequel. It finds K'tendi and his friend Tombu facing a second safari of whites invading their jungle, looking for dinosaurs in the Valley of Dragons, for rumours of Kit and Paula's first expedition have leaked out. Kit Kennedy tries to tell the invaders to leave but they won't. Kennedy knows it is not enough to simply kill the whites, for more would follow and the local tribes would be punished. Instead he concocts an elaborate plan to dispel the rumours of dinosaurs living in the jungle. To do this he pits Tombu's tribes against his neighbor, knowing the two armies would meet near the valley. He also gets a witch doctor to bring the rains early so that the lightning will start a forest fire near the dinosaurs, driving them out. The two armies then join forces to drive the beasts back into the valley before Kit seals it forever with dynamite. The safari and all those after will hear that the dinosaurs were dispersed into the jungle, making them near impossible to find.

There are some mysteries that surround Blish's jungle tales. First off, why was the sequel published first in the Winter 1948-49 issue then followed by the longer prequel in the Summer 1949? The use of the pseudonym VK Emden seems unnecessary if Blish had already published the sequel under his own name. One has to remember that pulp publishing was fast and loose. Perhaps the Winter issue needed a hole filled and Jerome Bixby (fellow SF author and editor) may have plugged it with the shorter sequel? It's confusing, but much of the Pulp business was. Unless an editor survives today to recall what happened, no one left any real evidence for us to sift through. Pulps were ephemera and not worth documenting.

Blish is of the HR Haggard school of jungle writing, presenting a more realistic version of Africa than Edgar Rice Burroughs does. Blish is familiar with Swahili and the customs and actions of Tombu and his people are less stereotypical than much of what appeared in Jungle Stories. K'tendi is not Tarzan, swinging through the treetops naked. Like Allan Quatermain, he wears clothes and carries a large bore rifle. How Blish learned about Africa I don't know. Looking at his bio I was prepared to see he had spent time in Africa, perhaps in the war, but he served in 1942 as a medical technician in Fort Dix. No jungle adventures there. Ultimately, he was a Science Fiction writer from New Jersey, so I have to assume he was a good researcher.

Blish's novel version is a weird combination of 1940s sexism and the growing freedoms of the 1960s. Paula Lee throws herself at Kit like any Pulp heroine while Blish inserts graphic (and gratuitous) descriptions of female circumcision and other details that do not further the plot. While you can make the argument that the idea of the "white hero" is racist (part and parcel of the genre), the relationship between Kit and Tombu is one of virtual equality. (This said Tombu hides Paula from Kit as a joke and Kit is willing to set Tombu's village against another in battle. Strange friends!) The sense of humor between the two friends is much more endearing than the icy cold romance with Paula Lee.

Kit's weird alliance with the giant snake Manalendi is also one of the story's best features. It's not surprising that their meeting was chosen for one of the edition's covers rather than a dinosaur picture. Despite the presence of dinos in the book, there are few good scenes with them. (To misquote Jurassic Park: "Ah, now eventually you do plan to have dinosaurs in your... in your dinosaur novel, right? Hello?") Again I suspect the fact that Blish was writing for Jungle Stories and not Thrilling Wonder is to blame. The editors would tolerate a small amount of dinosaura, but the major portion of the story would have to be a "jungle" story. The legend of "Mokele-mbemba" is irresistible to a Science Fiction writer and James Blish does as good a job as any (and better than some, ie: 1985's Baby, Secret of the Lost Legend). Ultimately, Kit Kennedy is an odd but charming part of Jungle Pulp history.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Night of the Demon (1957)

Who's In It: Dana Andrews (Laura), Peggy Cummins (Gun Crazy), and Niall MacGinnis (Jason and the Argonauts).

What It's About: A scientist (Andrews) travels to England to debunk a self-proclaimed warlock (MacGinnis), but his skepticism is challenged by strange doings and a threat on his life.

How It Is: When the British film Night of the Demon was released in the United States in 1958, it was chopped down by thirteen minutes and renamed Curse of the Demon. Though the cut footage isn’t crucial to the story, it does help set the film’s tone, so the original Night of the Demon (which is only 95 minutes long to begin with) is the one to watch. The reason I bring up the US version at all is because of the title change.

According to the film’s screenwriter, Charles Bennett, Columbia Pictures thought that Night of the Demon sounded too close to the title of Tennessee Williams’ short story, “Night of the Iguana.” That’s odd, because the famous stage play that Williams eventually created from that story wouldn’t premiere until three years after the release of Curse of the Demon, and the even more famous John Huston film adaptation of it didn’t come out until three years after that in 1964. Tennessee Williams was far from an obscure writer in the late ‘50s, so maybe mass audiences knew about the “Night of the Iguana” short story, but it does seem weird to rename a horror film because of one word it has in common with a story in a completely different medium. Still, the Night of the Iguana comparison is interesting because the Huston film and Night of the Demon share something important: an adjacency to the film noir movement.

Even though neither movie is true noir, important noir directors were in charge of them and brought in elements that call that genre to mind. Night of the Demon’s Jacques Tourneur also directed Out of the Past, one of the definitive noir films, in addition to other horror pictures like Cat People and I Walked With a Zombie. His use of light and shadow and cinematography gave his films a look and feel that fit right in with other noir films, even when his were about were-panthers and voodoo magic.

Night of the Demon has more in common with noir that just its look though. One of the things that stands out most about it is how it blurs the line between good and evil; quite a feat for a story about Satan worshipers. Dana Andrews (whose Laura is another film noir masterpiece) plays Dr. John Holden, a scientific skeptic from the US who travels to England to debunk the supernatural claims of a cult leader named Julian Karswell (MacGinnis). While there, Holden meets Joanna Harrington (Cummins from the film noir Gun Crazy), the niece of the last man to try to disprove Karswell’s abilities. Because Joanna’s uncle died horribly and mysteriously, she’s beginning to believe that Karswell may have the power he says he does. Holden believes none of it though. He stubbornly refuses to accept the supernatural, even when he sees evidence that he may be on the same path as Joanna’s late uncle.

Holden’s obstinate close-mindedness and his relentless persecution of Karswell keep him from being completely heroic and sympathetic. He’s also arrogant and not always pleasant to be around. Karswell, on the other hand, throws lavish parties for the kids near his estate and is convincing in his assertion that he only wants to be left alone to practice his religious beliefs with his followers. Of course those beliefs include killing those who stray from the flock, so he’s clearly the bad guy, but it’s hard to remember that when he’s dressing like a clown to do magic tricks for children.

Though it looks and feels a lot like film noir, Night of the Demon is inarguably horror. The film doesn’t rely on cheap shocks or even images of its titular monster to scare the audience, but Tourneur still delivers the creeps though stylish atmosphere and his viewers’ imaginations. The investigation story also builds tension and keeps the audience riveted as Holden gets closer and closer to the horrible truth.

The film doesn’t rely on images of the demon for scares, but it would have used them even less if Tourneur had had his way. His original plan was to be ambiguous about whether Karswell really had the power to summon demons, but his producer forced a definitive answer. In Tourneur’s initial vision, the demon would have never been shown, leaving the audience to decide for itself if Karswell had supernatural abilities or was just an extremely effective charlatan who perhaps believed his own lies. Producer Hal Chester had other ideas though, so the demon appears in the first several minutes of the film for the death of Joanna’s uncle and again at the film’s climax (you’ll have to watch the film to find out what happens there). Chester had to film the demon sequences after principal shooting though, without Tourneur’s help or cooperation.

While Tourneur’s version would have added a cool layer to the mystery, the version that exists is still an excellent, atmospheric, scary film. The vast majority of it operates on the principal that nothing’s as powerful as what you don’t see. But as effective as that is, the demon’s pretty scary too.

Even though the monster effects are primitive by modern standards, the design of the creature – based on actual, ancient drawings of mythological demons – is pretty terrifying. Tourneur’s version would have been stronger had it reinforced the themes of faith and skepticism by making the viewer decide which end of that spectrum he or she falls on, but the creature’s appearance doesn’t make the movie less unnerving. In fact, Martin Scorsese listed it as one of the eleven scariest movies of all time and he’s absolutely right.

Rating: Five out of five cordial conjurers.



This post was adapted from a guest post I wrote for my pal Ken's That F'ing Monkey blog.

Also, maybe check out my modern re-casting of the movie. I'm still really pleased with those choices.